


The Outfitter in the River

by kamja



Category: Bones (TV), Hey! Say! JUMP, KAT-TUN (Band), NewS (Band)
Genre: Comedy, Crossover, Detectives, Gen, Minor Character Death, Murder Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 23:46:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamja/pseuds/kamja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnnys meet the <i>Bones</i> universe and supporting characters -- While Booth and Brennan are away, Agents Tegoshi and Koki borrow the Jeffersonian to solve a murder. Some minor Arashi references - Ohno is the victim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Outfitter in the River

"Hey, look at this one!" a small girl excitedly picked up a flat, shiny rock off the ground. The children scattered along the riverbank gathered around. One of the taller boys in the group took it out of her hand.

"Cool. You could probably hit that piece of junk over there," the children looked over at a white mini-fridge dumped in the river. Although it was grimy with dirt, the sunshine still glinted off its sides. Another girl, tomboyish and lanky, held out her hand.

"I bet I can do it," she said confidently. The group opened up, forming a noisy semi-circle around the girl. She wound up and took aim.

The rock sailed like an arrow over the surface of the water and hit the mini-fridge with a sharp _clonk_. The fridge shifted on its soft, muddy resting place and sunk into the water. The children shouted in approval.

"You killed it! You killed it!"

As they jumped around excitedly, the small girl looked back at the river. The fridge was drifting to shore, bobbing up and down unsteadily in the slow current.

"Look, it's comin' this way!"

It came ashore some thirty feet downriver, wedged against a large rock and a plastic crate. The children rushed forward to take a look. The faster ones were already in the process of pulling the door open when the rest caught up. After a few moments, the seal broke, popping the door open slightly. A flood of smells and dirty water came rushing out. The children jumped back, coughing.

"Gross!"

The tomboyish girl was the first to recover. She picked up a stick and pried at the fridge door tentatively. Her face suddenly drained of color as the other children gathered to look.

"I killed---"

**

"Haven't seen you around lately, Ueda," FBI agent Koki Tanaka sat down at a booth in the Royal Diner. The lunchtime traffic was already gone, leaving a pleasant level of background noise and the lingering smell of fries. Across the table, his former coworker gave him a haggard look.

"I got assigned to a new file. Money laundering and a back-room gambling outfit," Tatsuya Ueda took a sip of coffee. It looked like all the coffee in DC couldn't help him. "The former agent left the case in an absolute mess. A whole banker's box of random notes and his receipts for late-night Chinese. It's like starting all over again. But enough about me; I hear they gave you office space."

Before Koki could answer, his cell phone rang. He looked at the text message. The writer managed to express a mixture of urgency and annoyance in just one sentence. "Yeah, a few doors down from Seeley Booth. Not as nice as some of the other offices, but a step up at any rate. Sorry man, I gotta go. They found a body by the river."

"I'm glad I haven't found any bodies yet. That'd be another stack of paperwork," Ueda waved a goodbye. He stifled a yawn. "I should've just stayed a boxer."

Koki laughed and headed out the door. No one would ever suspect that such a skinny guy with carefully styled hair used to box in amateur competitions to pay the bills. But Koki's department - which is where Ueda started out before transferring to his current position - knew better than that. He dialed his partner's number as he jumped into his car.

"Hey. No, I'm not at the office. Yeah, I'm on my way now."

"Ok," Tegoshi said on the other end before hanging up. A few feet away, most of the children were leaning against his car. The tomboyish girl and the tall boy were further up the river with an officer, pointing to where they'd first seen the fridge.

The remaining children looked up at him with saucer-sized eyes. Tegoshi took out a notebook. "Do you kids come here often?"

"Yeah," replied one of the braver children.

"Do you know when that fridge appeared in the river?"

"Hmmm," the child looked up at the sky. "Spring break?"

"Are you a boy or a girl?" one of them piped up, staring at his face. "Why are---"

"Shhh! He's obviously a boy 'cos he wears a suit!"

Tegoshi took a deep breath and asked the next question. The best thing to do was to simply ignore. "'How long ago was spring break?"

"A long time, like weeks and weeks," the other children chimed in. Then one of them sighted a few women talking to a police officer off in the distance. "Mommy!"

"Wait, wait, when's spring break?" Tegoshi asked helplessly as the children rushed off. He looked at his car, knowing what he'd see. There was a line of smudges from their hands.

"It's kinda like _Stand By Me_ , huh?" Koki appeared, wearing a grin on his face.

"The only thing I got was 'after spring break'," Tegoshi replied in greeting. He looked at his blank notepad.

"Two or three weeks ago?" the family in the apartment next to Koki's had school-aged children. "Funny that kids these days still throw rocks in rivers...most of the ones I know stay home and play video games."

"Doesn't that mean there's still hope for humanity?" Tegoshi and Koki headed towards the mini-fridge. A few forensic scientists were taking photos and samples. The dead body inside was a mass of soaked clothes and rotting flesh.

"What are the hopes of getting an ID on the victim?"

"Pretty slim. The body's been in the water for some time," one scientist replied. "This would be the Jeffersonian's cup of tea."

**

"We might have a lead on where the fridge came from," Koki came by Tegoshi's office later that day. He placed a printout on his partner's desk. "The serial number on the fridge had a warranty on it from the manufacturer. Registered to Jun Matsumoto."

"So we got a potential suspect?"

"Nope, Matsumoto left the country ages ago. But the address on the warranty is still good. It's a haberdashery on D street."

"A haberdashery?" Tegoshi smiled a little before moving on. "Well, that sounds about right. I got word from Caroline, by the way, that the Jeffersonian agreed to work with us. They moved the body to their lab, and they pulled dental records."

"Already? That's pretty nice of them, considering that Agent Booth isn't on the case. Did they get a match?"

"With Doctor Brennan on leave for her new book, it feels like we're highjacking the squints or something," Tegoshi pulled out his own printout. "And yeah, they did get an ID. Satoshi Ohno. He runs a retail store, and my address matches yours for the haberdashery."

**

"Hikaru Yaotome...why didn't you report the fridge as missing?"

The young clerk at the haberdashery shrugged. He had a well-groomed look about him. It was probably expected in a place like this. "We figured the boss moved it without telling us."

"It didn't strike you as suspicious that he also went missing?" Koki gave the clerk a crooked look.

"Ohno did a lot of things without telling us. He'd disappear on fishing expeditions for weeks or even months at a time. Two weeks is really no big deal, coming from him," Hikaru paused. A look of worry crossed his face. "You said there was a body in there?"

"Yes. And we've already confirmed that it's your boss. We're looking at a homicide."

Hikaru paled. He turned and exchanged a look with his coworker, who had stopped organizing the merchandise and bumped a handful of bowties to the floor. It was a look that the agents knew well, one that said, "What now?" It could mean any number of things; guilt, grief, confusion. Tegoshi stepped forward.

"Are there any other managers, or a landlord we could speak to?"

"I know that Ohno had some trouble paying the bills last year, so someone named Ninomiya bought out half of the interest in the business. I don't think he ever visited the store, or even lives in the DC area, for that matter," Hikaru rummaged through a small box of business cards by the cash register. His hands were shaking. "I can give you the landlord's contact information and any papers you need."

Taking Tegoshi's cue, Koki walked up to the Hikaru's co-worker, who was picking up the ties off the floor. "So you're Ryutaro Morimoto?"

"Yeah."

"Do you remember any thing at all about Ohno's behavior before he disappeared? Did it seem like he'd argued with anyone, or was in any sort of trouble?"

Ryutaro had an air of irresponsibility around him, though he rearranged the ties very quickly and precisely. He shook his head. "Not that I can tell. But he really didn't talk much, y'know. Read a lot of fishing magazines in the back room."

“He was into fishing, huh,” Koki pretended to take an interest in the the ties on the table. “Did any of his fishing buddies ever come by the store?”

“No, though his landlord’s been visiting more than usual.”

**

Back at the Jeffersonian, Ohno's skeleton had been moved to the bone room. The area around the light table felt crowded with the addition of Koki and Tegoshi. Unused to the various scenes and the rhythm of the work in the lab, they both felt quite out of place. Brennan's intern, Daisy Wick, was hunched over some fragments from the back of the skull.

"Any luck finding the cause of death?" Koki asked, trying not to look at any particular spot for long. He didn't really like being in the bone room. It made him feel creepy-crawly.

"I'm certain it's blunt-force trauma to the back of the head. The staining on the inside of the skull over here, here and - here - suggests hemorrhaging in the brain, leading to death," Daisy answered. Her voice practically vibrated with excitement. Koki idly wondered when she came up for air, and more importantly, he contemplated the strength of the coffee at the Jeffersonian. Maybe Ueda could try some. "We haven't figured out exactly what caused it yet. The pattern of the fractures suggest something long and cylindrical, like a pipe. But the impact is a bit...delicate, not possible with the heaviness of a regular plumbing pipe. Hodgins was able to lift a metallic fragment, so he might have some ideas. Was there any info from the employees?"

"They were able to tell us when the fridge disappeared - April 7, about two weeks ago. There was a party the night before at the store, which was the last time the employees saw him," Tegoshi replied. "And you guys confirmed that the time of death was also during this period, so we're looking at a gap between the end of the party and opening hours the next morning. What we don't know is whether he was killed at the store and placed in the fridge, or if he'd moved the fridge himself and killed in a different location."

"Here you all are. Hiding off in this room," Caroline Julian walked in and handed Koki a printout. "Take a look at this. The victim's retail space is leased for twenty years, at well below market rate."

"That's a good deal, in that part of town...but it says here that the lease was originally signed by Matsumoto in 2006. He must've really pinned the landlord to the wall."

"Yeah, the lease was assigned to Ohno a couple of years ago. The landlord owns several retail properties all over the city, going at high-end prices," she leaned over and pointed to the bottom of the page. "Down here, you can see that the landlord attempted to find default and evict the victim every chance he got, which means only one thing."

Koki and Tegoshi nodded in comprehension. "The landlord has a motive to get the lease voided, so he can get a new tenant who will pay market price. One of his employees did mention that he had been coming around a lot recently."

Caroline coughed and turned to go. "See if you can bring him in."

**

"Are you sure this is gonna work?" Tegoshi looked out the window doubtfully as they drove through the city. The plan was to go undercover as potential tenants at a property the landlord listed for sale.

"Why not?" Koki didn't seem worried at all as he stopped at a turn lane.

"Well, isn't it odd that a guy with no hair would be a hairdresser looking at salon space---"

"We're here," Koki straightened out his jacket collar. "You've got hair. It'll be fine."

They didn't say anything more as they walked towards an empty corner storefront with a "for sale" sign tacked to the window. A tall, slim man in a dark suit was waiting by the door. He flashed a goofy smile when the agents approached.

"Ah, you must be the prospective..." he trailed off slightly as he noted Koki, but recovered quickly. "tenants."

"Yeah, I'm Shuuji," Koki said, ignoring Tegoshi's nudge. "And this is Akira."

"I'm Junnosuke Taguchi, and this is the entrance...which doubles as an exit!" he chuckled at his own joke as he unlocked the door with a merry jangle of his keys. "This, sirs, is a prime spot right by the university. Check it out!"

Koki resisted the sudden urge to kick the landlord in the back of the knee as the three of them entered the empty salon. There wasn't much to see - just a bare floor and some fixtures under dust covers. Tegoshi somehow snapped quickly into his role.

"The ad said the washing station is brand-new," he looked up at the lighting by the mirrors.

"Yeah, just got it installed. Right this way..."

"Did you hear about that dead guy they found in the river recently?" Koki asked suddenly. Tegoshi shot him a Look. They were supposed to ease into that part.

To the agents' satisfaction, however, Taguchi tripped over thin air and stumbled. He turned around quickly. "Uh yeah, I did. It was horrible, huh...why-why do you ask?"

"Just wondering about the safety of the neighborhood. Crime seems to be going up all over the city."

"Ohhhhh, well, it's very safe. More than safe, really. The washing stations - if you please - just this way..."

"I heard that you own the property the guy was leasing."

Taguchi stopped in his tracks at this. "Where the hell did did you hear that? Who are you guys, anyway? Look, just because one guy died behind one of my buildings..."

"He died behind the store?" Tegoshi's eyes lit up.

"W-well, that is-"

Koki took out his badge. "FBI."

**

"Do you think any of these people might have a grudge or argument against the victim?" Dr. Lance Sweets scrutinized the party guest list Hikaru brought in. His eyes seemed to stop at one point on he paper, but he didn’t say anything. They were sitting across from each other in the interrogation room. Koki and Tegoshi watched from behind the one-way glass in the next room.

"Ask him about Ryutaro," Koki whispered into the microphone the fed into Sweets' headset. Taguchi refused to talk without a lawyer. The agents needed more information, so they decided to bring in Hikaru.

Hikaru shook his head. "To be honest, Ohno was never around long enough to have any disagreements."

"So then, the employees run the store?" Sweets looked at him sympathetically. "That's a lot of responsibility. Aren't both you and Ryutaro still students at the design school?"

"Yeah, we're working for school credit," Hikaru seemed really honest and really earnest, Sweets noted. He wondered if that sort of ambition was enough to kill over.

"What happens at the end of the semester?"

"We do something else...though Ohno hired Ryutaro for a permanent position," Hikaru leaned back and folded his arms, looking unhappy.

Sweets leaned forward and nodded, as if to place a commiserating accent on his next question. "Did you want that job?"

"Of course. I have seniority, and I do most of the work anyway since Ryutaro's a total slacker. He’s always hanging out with Daiki," then Hikaru blinked in comprehension. "But what could I gain from killing the boss? Besides, we're both screwed. Ohno's dead, so he can't sign off on the externship papers. He’s the only one who supervised us. We can't get credit for the work we did all semester."

“And what about Ryutaro? Did Ohno ever get on his case about being a slacker?”

Hikaru smiled. “Why should he, when he’s the way he is? I think he secretly liked that Ryutaro was so laid back, just like him.”

“The neighbors on both side of the store...they’re both retail, right?”

“Yeah, they both came to the party.”

“They tend to keep the same hours as your store, right?”

“Yeah...though I know one of them seems to do a lot of work at night,” Hikaru reached forward and pointed at a name on the list. “Sometimes I’ll notice extra garbage bags out back in the morning that weren’t there after closing time the day before.”

“Any idea what goes on?”

Hikaru shrugged. “Dunno. I just assumed they were doing stock or remodeling or something like that.”

Koki and Tegoshi were silent, but Sweets knew to keep going. “There might be contractors coming through, or other people?”

“Now that I think of it...” Hikaru knit his eyebrows. “I never see extra people coming and going. Well, nobody that would use the front door, anyway.”

"All right, Hikaru," Sweets got up. "That'll be all for now."

He stepped into the adjoining room where Koki and Tegoshi were listening. They looked at him.

"Why’d you stop questioning him?" Tegoshi asked.

"I don't think Hikaru is covering for someone. However," Sweets held up the guest list. "He can't lie about something he doesn't know."

He circled a name on the paper with a pen. "I've been doing some profiling for another case. Agent Ueda will definitely have a thing or two to say about this person."

**

"I knew it was only a matter of time before we'd have to talk, after I heard about your case," Ueda said almost cheerfully as he stepped into Koki's office. He looked around; it was his first time in the new office. "Not bad. I still remember when this used to belong to Agent Williams...he didn't have any comfortable chairs..."

"So Ohno's next door neighbor is one of the guys that you've been checking out," Koki motioned to a very comfortable chair across from his desk. He flipped through a file. "This Massu character..."

"He runs a gambling ring in the back room of his sneaker shop, though there's no evidence that your victim ever participated," Ueda looked curiously out of the window, distracted. "That cloud looks like six-pack abs."

"What?"

"Nothing,” he reached forward and grabbed the transcript of Hikaru’s interview. “Yeah, they’ve been having a feeling that they’re being watched. They’re very careful about coming and going from the shop. Anyway, the undercover agent has never mentioned any friction between the two. When it comes to his life as a store owner, most of Massu’s gripes are about his customers or his employees.”

Koki thought about this for a moment. “So, the only angle left would be if Ohno had somehow discovered the gambling."

**

"Hi, welcome to Massu's Sneakers."

Massu's sneaker shop was cluttered with merchandise. The door was propped open to let in the spring breeze, but it didn't seem to help the strong scent of leather and rubber that came naturally to any athletic goods store. Koki and Tegoshi took a swift look around, noting the entrance into the back room. Then they noticed Ryutaro, who was leaning on the counter, idly playing with a rack of shoelaces.

"Oh, it's the agents," he said as they approached.

"Hikaru wasn't kidding when he said you're a slacker," Koki said.

"Hey, nothing wrong with visiting your neighbor. I'm on break anyway," Ryutaro replied with a challenging look on his face. Nevertheless, he turned to go. "Later, Daiki. Agents."

"You're Daiki Arioka?" Tegoshi asked the guy behind the counter. He seemed like a sweet guy. It was difficult to imagine him involved in illegal gambling, but you never knew. He flashed his badge as a formality. "Is your boss around?"

"No, he went out. Is this about Ohno?"

"We were just wondering if you guys saw anything on the night of the party."

Daiki seemed nervous. He rearranged the items on the counter, squaring up the edges to each other so they lined up neatly. "A lot of us were drunk that night, so it's hard to remember every little thing."

Tegoshi nodded, playing along. Koki narrowed his eyes. There was something familiar about Daiki’s mannerisms. "Did you notice any arguments or anyone who looked suspicious? Seems like Ryutaro likes to visit a lot. Did he ever mention anyone causing trouble at their store?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Did Ohno and your boss get along well?"

"I would say so. But both of them are in and out a lot. They don't get a lot of chances to run into each other."

There was a short pause. Daiki’s body was tense underneath his calm expression. He didn’t avoid looking at either agent, but he also didn’t hold his gaze on anything for long.

"How long have you worked here, Mr. Arioka?"

"About a year."

"This store specializes only in sneakers? How's the business?"

"It's been a little slow, but Massu's pretty optimistic."

"But the cost of running a business in this part of town is pretty high."

"Yeah...well, I don't know much about it," Daiki started rummaging in the drawer underneath the counter. "Sorry, I just need to get some stuff done."

"Yes, excuse us for taking up your time," Tegoshi nodded a goodbye. The agents stopped outside the store. The bright sunshine warmed them as they walked back to the car. They didn’t even have to say it loud; both were thinking the same thing.

Daiki was up to something.

**

"We hear that you have something we'd like to see," Tegoshi and Koki entered Angela Montenegro's office. They'd received a call on the way back from the sneaker shop, and in their minds, any excuse to visit Angela was a good excuse. Hodgins was also there, which sort of deflated the moment. They appeared to be dating, but since Tegoshi and Koki weren’t privy to much Jeffersonian gossip, it was hard to tell.

"Yeah, we figured out that it was a clothes cart," Angela pulled up a simulation on the Angelatron. "The metal fragment Hodgins found helped us trace it to rolling clothes carts commonly used in clothing stores. They can be disassembled, and the top bar for hanging the clothes is the correct weight and strength for the fracture pattern on the victim's skull."

Angela was wearing a flower-patterned cotton dress. Her dark, wavy hair was brushed out and hanging down her back. As Hodgins went to write down some data off a computer screen, both Koki and Tegoshi’s eyes instantly wandered to her.

“So...that would definitely be enough to get a search warrant for the store,” Koki said nonchalantly as he took a step closer, wondering what kind of perfume she was wearing. Hodgins looked up, and he turned away and pretended to cough.

Angela looked over at the disturbance, and sensed the guilt hanging over Tegoshi and Koki. She gave them a knowing look before pressing another button on her control pad. A computer-generated wire person swung a metal pole at the back of another person's head. "Since it’s possible to hold the bar at various points, it’s difficult to tell for now what the height of our suspect should be. But we can cross that bridge once we find the weapon."

**

Hikaru and Ryutaro stood by the door as various FBI agents milled around the store with black lights and cameras. Down the street, they sighted Taguchi running up at breakneck speed.

"Woah, woah, what's going on here?" he said by way of greeting.

"We have a search warrant for the place, Mr. Taguchi," Tegoshi handed him a piece of paper. "Our lab techs determined the murder weapon."

"And we've got something else," Koki called out from the back of the store. On the floor, little smears of blood originating from the back entrance glowed under the black lights. Everyone followed it as they led into the storage room. It ended by the wall.

"T-that's where the mini-fridge used to be," Hikaru said, his voice shaking. Ryutaro looked pale but didn't say anything.

"Must've taken a long time to scrub the floor clean again," Koki was looking very keenly at Hikaru, Ryutaro and Taguchi. There was no question that one of them moved the body, since they were the only three people with unlimited access to the store.

"Agent Tanaka, this clothes cart tests positive for blood," another agent called out on the other side of the storage room, where various clothes racks and hangers were bunched together. Another piece of the puzzle slid into place.

"All three of you need to come with --."

"It was Daiki," Ryutaro said suddenly. Everyone turned to look at him. He stood his ground, shaking his head. "No...I'm not going to jail for him."

**

"You knew about the body's location, and we found traces of Ohno's blood in your car...yet your fingerprints don't appear on the murder weapon," Koki threw down a file that contained Angela's image analysis of the surface of the clothes cart. "Now why is that, Taguchi? Were you working with Daiki?"

"It’s because I didn't kill him," Taguchi folded his arms. "I just moved the body. I had nothing to do with the murder."

"You have to give me more than that, if you don't want to be charged with accessory to murder."

The landlord shook his head. "It sounds weird, I know, but that's all there is. I came by the store early in the morning. I noticed that it wasn't open yet, so I went around back. Ohno was laying there in the back alley, already dead."

"Why didn't you call the police?"

"And have the rent value go down?" he cringed, as if the just the thought hurt. "I couldn't let that happen, so I used my key to get into the store...Look, I panicked, all right? I put him in the fridge and dumped him in the river. That's all. I'm not proud of it."

**

Daiki leaned back in his chair as he waited in the interrogation room. He kept zipping the zipper of his hoodie up and down. On the other side of the one-way window, Tegoshi and Koki watched him.

"He looks like he might crack any minute," Tegoshi said solemnly. Despite that, he took a sip of his coffee as if he was just watching TV.

"His friend just ratted him out; I think anyone might crack," Koki put down his cup and went into the room.

Daiki didn't look up when Koki opened the door and sat down at the table across from him.

"We have your fingerprints on the murder weapon," Koki said, pulling out Angela's analysis. "But we don't quite have a motive to kill Ohno. As far as we can tell, you had no beef with the guy."

Daiki studied the analysis. "I didn’t. Ohno was cool...Ryutaro said he cleaned it."

"So was it Ryutaro's idea? Or did he do it?" Koki was surprised that they were getting to the good part so easily, but as he said just moments before, Ryutaro had ratted out Daiki. It was hard to be protective towards someone like that. However, Daiki didn’t respond to either question.

Tegoshi whispered in Koki's ear. "Try that theory we thought of."

They'd come up with it earlier that day. "Ohno knew about Massu and the back room, didn't he."

Daiki paled. "You know about that?"

"We're the FBI. Of course we know. Your boss made you off him, didn't he?"

This seemed to fire up Daiki. "I'd never do that rat bastard's dirty work!"

"And why is that?"

"Because I'm not like him," Daiki slumped back down in his chair. "Because I was afraid he'd off _me_ if I tried to quit."

"Ah." Tegoshi breathed in comprehension. Puzzled, Koki shot a look at the window. _What?_

There was a short pause as Tegoshi explained very quickly.

"It was dark that night, wasn't it," Koki laid out a photos of Massu and Ohno, side by side. "And from behind, you couldn't tell them apart, not after all those drinks from the party."

Daiki put his head on the table and cried.

**

"Well, that's one way of quitting a job," Tegoshi stirred a cup of coffee. He and Koki were sitting in the Royal Diner, enjoying a late dinner.

Koki shook his head. "He and Ryutaro schemed to get rid of Massu, but they got separated at the party. By the time Daiki killed Ohno by accident in the alley, Ryutaro was too drunk to care and Daiki was so scared that he ran off. So the body was left outside until morning, where Taguchi found and moved it."

"Must've been a shock when they discovered the body had disappeared."

"Glad it's behind me. I told Booth about it, and he just laughed. Just another day at the office for him. He and Dr. Brennan will both be back tomorrow."

Tegoshi sighed. "Too bad we didn't get a chance to talk to Angela much.


End file.
